Laura Christensen's Blog, page 5
November 19, 2015
Behind the scenes: What She Saw By Lantern Light
I’ve been a fan of both Enchanted Conversation and World Weaver Press for years. So when I saw the announcement that Kate Wolford would be heading up a joint anthology of original or lesser-known fairy tales set in winter, I decided I would write towards her prompt. I never actually expected that she would like it, though I did try to hit both her theme and word count goals as a sort of experiment for myself.
What follows is a spoiler-free behind-the-scenes glimpse into the story, why it turned out the way it did, for those who like to read such things.
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When I sat down to write the story in April (2015), my grandmother, for whom I’d been the primary caretaker the first six months or so of her brain cancer, had just recently passed away. My own health, since I had my own chronic illness to contend with, had been thoroughly shot to pieces, but as part of my recovery I’d decided to return to writing again little by little.
I also had no workable computer at the time and so the idea was that I’d trial out writing a couple short stories on my 7″ tablet paired with a new bluetooth keyboard before delving into anything longer. This set-up created the interesting effect of only being able to see a few lines of story at a time.
If the tale is packed full of details, it’s because if I didn’t write them, they would not exist. Whatever ended up “on paper” became the story in my head, not the other way around.
In the bleak midwinter…
The opening line of the Frozen Fairy Tales prompt also happened to be the title of one of my favorite carols. I’ve included the version that has meant the most to me over the years, trekking with me through the snowfalls and dark nights of my time living in Armenia, and soothing my grandmother’s anxiety as we sat together in her living room in our last month together. I tried to capture the essence of the song in my story, both consciously and unconsciously.
“And a woman as had her wits about her.”
The Secret of Roan Inish is perhaps my favorite folktale movie of all time. I watched it religiously when I was younger, to my sister’s bemusement. If I was going to write a own folktale retelling, I had to pay homage to it in some way, if only in a turn of phrase. Everyone with Netflix should check it out.
‘Not old like me. I mean old. Old like darkness and stars,’ she said to the flames.
Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time has been my “bedtime story” audiobook of choice in recent years. It never fails to sooth my own anxiety and help me conquer my insomnia (a frequent, pesky demon since my chronic illness struck). One of my favorite scenes is when Nanny Ogg tells Susan, granddaughter of Death, her own hearth-tale about the lady Time giving birth to a mostly-mortal boy. In honor of Terry Pratchett’s passing and in thanks for all the comfort and relief, I paid tribute to this scene by giving my favorite line a cameo.
Christkindelsmärik…
(Photographer Claude TRUONG-NGOC, Wikimedia Commons)
The original Alsatian folktale I based my retelling on starts off with a newly-wed young woman setting off on her first, midnight trip from Rosheim to sell goods at the market in Strasbourg. Making the switch to Strasbourg’s world-famous, centuries-old Christmas Market seemed like a perfect change to make, given the winter theme.
Sunday’s child…
The concept of a child born on Sunday being able to see into and participate in the world of spirits and faeries I borrowed from a different Alsatian folktale, which I translated from an oral telling under the title “The Faerie’s Gift of Tears.”
My own family lore…
I grew up with stories about my ancestors, including how one Swedish ancestor of mine (a young woman) would regularly walk for long hours of the night to “commute” between where she worked and where her family lived. And there was this one time where she thought she saw something frightening in the dark…. I won’t tell you what it was or what it turned out to be, but the imagery has stayed with me. My grandmother also told me a couple tales of her family members encountering friendly ghosts. So, there’s that.
November 11, 2015
“What She Saw By Lantern Light”
Our first snowfall ironically marks the occasion. My short story “What She Saw By Lantern Light” can now be found in the anthology Frozen Fairy Tales.
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Winter is not coming. Winter is here. As unique and beautifully formed as a snowflake, each of these fifteen stories spins a brand new tale or offers a fresh take on an old favorite like Jack Frost, The Snow Queen, or The Frog King. From a drafty castle to a blustery Japanese village, from a snow-packed road to the cozy hearth of a farmhouse, from an empty coffee house in Buffalo, New York, to a cold night outside a university library, these stories fully explore the perils and possibilities of the snow, wind, ice, and bone-chilling cold that traditional fairy tale characters seldom encounter.
In the bleak midwinter, heed the irresistible call of fairy tales. Just open these pages, snuggle down, and wait for an icy blast of fantasy to carry you away. With all new stories of love, adventure, sorrow, and triumph by Tina Anton, Amanda Bergloff, Gavin Bradley, L.A. Christensen, Steven Grimm, Christina Ruth Johnson, Rowan Lindstrom, Alison McBain, Aimee Ogden, J. Patrick Pazdziora, Lissa Marie Redmond, Anna Salonen, Lissa Sloan, Charity Tahmaseb, and David Turnbull to help you dream through the cold days and nights of this most dreaded season.
Table of Contents:
Introduction by Kate Wolford
The Stolen Heart by Christina Ruth Johnson
Faithful Henry by Steven Grimm
The Ice Fisher by J. Patrick Pazdziora
Buffalo Wings by Lissa Marie Redmond
Cold Bites by Tina Anton
Death in Winter by Lissa Sloan
Simon the Cold by Charity Tahmaseb
The Light of the Moon, the Strength of the Storm, the Warmth of the Sun by Aimee Ogden
A Heart of Winter by Anna Salonen
Happily Ever After by Amanda Bergloff
The Heart of Yuki-Onna by Alison McBain
The Wolf Queen by Rowan Lindstrom
What She Saw by Lantern Light by L.A. Christensen
The Shard of Glass by David Turnbull
How Jack Frost Stole Winter by Gavin Bradley
Barnes & Noble
November 1, 2015
Story accepted!
Happy All Saints’ Day!
My Alsatian folktale retelling “What She Saw By Lantern Light” will be published in Enchanted Conversation‘s and World Weaver Press‘ joint winter anthology, Frozen Fairy Tales. You can find out more information, including the announced table of contents, here. You can find Frozen Fairy Tales on Goodreads, here.
I’ll post more once the anthology’s released. :)
Until then, I put my Bibliography back up, fully fleshed-out. I took it down a couple years ago because it was depressingly empty and I felt having it up was rather pointless (and discouraging). But now it is much fuller! And there is a point to having one! Woot woot.
October 19, 2015
Persinette Wide Release
It took me longer than I was expecting to put together this wide release. First came life things, then came a bug in the ePub, then came various hitches with several different retailers. However, it’s all come together and Persinette is now available at a variety of e-book retailers.
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A hundred years before Rapunzel, there was Persinette. Before the Old Witch ever locked Rapunzel in a tower, a Fairy set out to change Persinette’s destiny.
Read the French fairy tale that inspired the Grimm Brothers’ “Rapunzel,” learn about the authoress Mlle de La Force, and discover answers to questions such as why Persinette’s father traded her for a fistful of parsley and how she survived for years alone in her wilderness.
Includes translations of the French tale “Persinette” (1698), the Italian tale “Petrosinella” (1634), and the German tale “Rapunzel” (1812-57), along with background information on each of the tales and their authors.
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Retailers:
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Buy direct:
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Add to Goodreads or write a review
Librarians: Purchase Persinette for your library catalog with Overdrive or EbooksAreForever
September 21, 2015
Disappointments in Final Books
I jotted down this list last summer, after I’d read a lot of final books in trilogies/series and found that a lot of them were disappointing for the same set of reasons. I wanted to write up the list while it was still fresh in my analytical-reader mind. I meant to turn it into a blog post then, but a lot of crazy life stuff came first. So, here it is now. Feel free to add your own in the comments. I figure I can refer back to this list with my writer hat on later.
So, without further ado, things I thought made final books weak:
New set of main characters introduced, taking time/focus away from those we grew to love in the first two books.
New plot/story arcs introduced out of nowhere, then not given enough depth or resolution as the others.
Last minute betrayals, romances, or deaths included for “extra drama.” These feel last minute because the betrayal/romance wasn’t set up or hinted at in previous books, and death wasn’t a possibility or a true risk before (no minor characters had died, so why should a major character die now, etc.)
Plot holes and other evidences of a rush job in writing, as if the author/editor were on a much tighter deadline than the previous books, less time allotted to think ramifications through properly, or they’d spent years mulling on or simmering over the first half of their story but only now discovered their ending, and so on.
An ending that isn’t given enough time or development to balance out everything that came before it, to feel satisfying or resolved. (“In late, out early” misused).
Not enough hope (to counterbalance all the previous darkness)
Too epic, losing sight of the intimate stories and scale of the previous books and what made these compelling.
Anything about ending books that bothers you (as a reader)?
September 11, 2015
Persinette Stats
I love stats posts. I don’t even know why. There’s just something about them that are so fun?
Thanks to Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach for creating KDP Plus to consolidate Amazon numbers, though, or I might never have gone through the headache of doing so quite yet. If you’re a self-publisher using Amazon, their graph-generator is absolutely fantastic.
So! Some quick stats for Persinette‘s first three months on Amazon. I should also say, for its debut, I had enrolled it in Kindle Unlimited v.1.
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Books sold from April to June: 51
Of those, 10 were from KU1/KOLL, 5 during pre-order
Books given away for May’s free-promotion week: 135
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I’ll let you in on a secret, though. July goose-egged! I was expecting a drop-off with the summer slump and the 3-month end, but not to fall all the way to zero. Craziness.
Otherwise, Goodreads has 3 reviews and 7 ratings (avg rating of 4.86) currently. That’s fantastic for such a niche, little book.
Overall, I’m very happy with how thing are going, (especially since numbers picked back up in August even though I wasn’t doing any sort of promotion, haha). I’m working on my next translations and projects, but in the meantime, numbers to grin at. Not a shabby start at all.
ETA: I forgot a fun stat! Countries represented in the above? Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, USA, and the UK.
Hi readers! :D
August 24, 2015
Call and Response poem
I’m going to be collecting a few things I’ve done elsewhere, here, to make up for the lack of interesting things lately on the blog while I work on writing and translating. The first is a poem-response sent to a folklore aficionado acquaintance. Check out his tumblr for lots of cool faerie-lore.
http://littletranslator.tumblr.com/post/121946989198/changeling-child-left-behind-never-retrieved
August 18, 2015
Interview
Today my interview with Lisa Carter for her Literary Translator Spotlight went up.
I’m overdue to update you all on what I’ve been up to, but being elaborate will have to come later. Suffice it to say that I’m writing and translating incrementally behind the scenes. :)
June 1, 2015
Promoting Fairytale Non-fiction
Here are some of the things I have learned in the past three months about selling short (46 page) e-books and folklore/fairy-tale translations & non-fiction. You have to admit, it’s a slightly different story than trying to promote or sell a novel. In no particular order:
1. Being in the Amazon Top 100 in the Folklore & Fairy Tale categories isn’t enough to sell books, especially when you have no reviews. I figured this out when I was hand-selling copies of my book, before I made its existence public knowledge. These categories are just too small, and not browsed often enough.
However, the same isn’t true for being in the Top 100 in the corresponding free categories. Those do get drive-by “sales.”
2. Here are the three paid promotional sites that produced a spike in sales even though my e-book wasn’t a novel:
Digital Book Today: New Release list
bknights
genre pulse
3. The Indie View was the only effective way of getting an early review from strangers out of every other method I tried, and it’s free. I searched the first 150 or so of their listed reviewers, looking for everyone who liked fantasy, Christian fiction*, non-fiction, and short stories. I applied to 5 reviewers who listed some combination of these. Of the 5, one responded that they were full up and would have to pass. Then another responded enthusiastically–and bumped Persinette up first in line, ultimately giving it its first 5-star review. :)
4. Getting a 5-star review as its first Amazon review has done more to sell the e-book than anything else. This is self-explanatory, and is most likely true for any kind of book, be it novel or non-fiction.
5. Goodreads is hands-down the best way Persinette has been discovered by strangers, especially once listed on Listopia lists for its various categories. If you haven’t listed your standalone or first-in-series book anywhere on Listopia, do so. Even just a single-vote by its author is enough to help readers find your book. You don’t need to go extort votes from anyone in order for Listopia to be an effective promotional tool. ;)
6. KDP Select results: I matched my genre pulse ad up with a 5-day free promotional period that started not long after I got my first 5-star review. I was very pleased with the results, though the genre pulse ad was only effective the first 2 days of the promotional period.
If I could do it again, I would split the 5 days of free promotion into a 3-day period and a 2-day period and promote each one. Experiments, experiments.
Otherwise, the vast majority of my sales have come from the Amazon US store. Only now am I starting to get sales trickling in at the Amazon UK and Amazon CA stores. This is probably due to the fact that the 5-star review is now cross-posted to the other stores due to the fact that someone voted for it as being “helpful”.
7. Kindle Unlimited results: Persinette has gotten very few borrows in comparison to sales. However, because the e-book is listed for sale at $.99, the royalties from the borrows should pretty much equal the royalties from the sales. I will know for certain when I get the full report.
8. Patreon is still my most dependable fairytale/folklore income stream. I find it ironic that the translations I post for free on my website do more to help support my hobbies than the rather more expensive-to-produce e-book. Still, I wouldn’t change my decision to publish Persinette.
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* – Persinette isn’t actually Christian fiction, but I delve into the French Wars of Religion of the 16th century and their reversal during the 17th century in order to make a few points about Mlle de La Force’s life and bibliography, and so I wanted to be absolutely certain the reviewer wouldn’t be turned off.
May 11, 2015
Promote your book of folklore or fairy tales
For everyone who is an author/folklorist/collector/translator of folktales and fairy tales and needs help promoting their book:
As a folklore enthusiast, I know how hard it is to find marketing options for folklore and fairy tale translations, anthologies, and collections. So I’m here to help you gain more exposure for your work.
I will promote your book of folklore (whether it is a public domain collection or your original new translations) on Twitter, Patreon, Tumblr, and G+. If the book consists of half or more new or original translations, I will include a permanent link on my website and include a mention in my next newsletter.
All of these methods will help gain new exposure and track-backs for your work, which will increase its rankings in Google searches and more.
(Please note that if you want me to purchase and review your book, you will not be paying for the review but covering the cost of the purchase and the time taken to read it. You will not be able to choose what kind of review I write, but good, middling, or negative, any sort of review will help your book gain exposure. I will also include a full disclosure with my review).
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